- This interview was published by ianbits in January 2025 to coincide with the shutdown of The Elder Scrolls: Legends. Questions were answered by Jason Coleman, Peter Janaros, and Ryan Siegel-Stechler from Sparkypants Studios, the game development studio that maintained Legends since 2018. The below text is hosted here with permission.
What was the switchover like as a studio and how did SparkyPants get involved? [Jason]Edit
We don't really know the details but our understanding at the time was that, in order to keep the game running, Bethesda needed to find someone to remake the game.
It was kind of an unprecedented request:
- Would have no access to any of the existing code or assets for the game other than raw card art and audio.
- Recreate the client and all backend services based on playing the game.
- Launch in 9 months (it ended up being 12 months). No public beta period.
- When we launched, we would have 24 hours to migrate all existing players.
- Create new content going forward.
So it was referred to as a "client" refresh but it was, in reality, a complete rewrite of the client, servers, and everything in between. There is no code or non-raw assets shared between the original Direwolf version and ours. And, contrary to some speculation, partly born out of player frustration, we are actually a very experienced team. It's just brutal to make a full game like TESL in less than a year, even with some of us working virtually around the clock. It's not unusual for it to take 9-12 months just to get a game like TESL fully ready to ship once it feels complete. Let alone make the entire thing from scratch and ship it live to existing players.
It definitely felt odd to take over from another studio but we were simultaneously into the idea of keeping alive this super cool game DireWolf and Bethesda had created. And there was some obvious passion within Bethesda to keep the game going and try to grow it.
So the challenges were there from the beginning. One major stroke of luck was having Josh Utter-Leyton join from DireWolf, helping to build out the card design team and maintain continuity with the original design. He worked with Ryan S and Peter on leading the card design efforts.
When we first started, we didn't have anything to work with other than the existing playable version, same as anyone. But, given the timeline, we had to move. Then, a few months in, we started receiving documentation from DireWolf. Which, as documentation goes, was actually quite good but also, as you'd expect, not necessarily reflecting the current state of the game. The combination of Bethesda QA and Josh helped fill in the games and let us make corrections versus what we had reverse-engineered from playing the game.
A bit later we started receiving sample data dumps so we could figure out how to convert all the account data into our databases. Based on those, we wrote scripts to convert from their format to something we could import into our databases.
Getting the feel of animations and gameflow right was one of the biggest challenges when we first launched. Recreating all the VFX and having them meet or exceed the original. We weren't there and everyone could feel it. But the launch had to happen then.
There were other nuances like players being upset at the card art not being framed the same or our use of some of the variant audio. The reason for it is that we just received a bunch of raw card art and audio and, from that, needed to figure out how to match what was in the game. And, post launch, we were simultaneously working to fix and improve the game while creating new content. So it remained hectic after launch.
It was painful to ship something that wasn't great from the start. A significant low point for me was the team having worked that hard to pull off what was something of a miracle but players were still rightfully unhappy. All that said, I'm proud of the quality we ended up with (other than maybe not being able to complete the card sets like we intended). And I'm glad we were all able to keep it going even in maintenance mode for as long as we did. I wish it could continue forever.
How difficult was it making sure the sets you designed were distinct from other card games on the market? [Ryan S / Peter]Edit
It actually wasn't too difficult! It's really interesting that you asked about the challenges of working on a game initially designed by another team, because this was actually one of the major upsides of working on a game later in its development cycle. The unique stuff about TESL that made it cool (Prophecies and Runes, Lanes & the Shadow Lane, deck construction rules) were super generative and it felt to us like that made it really easy to be distinct.
It also was the case that there weren't as many major digital TCGs that had broken through and MTG Arena was totally nascent, so digital only card designs were also extremely generative. Stuff like Wax/Wane that would be more or less impossible on paper became some of the most popular and cool mechanics.
What were the challenges of working on a game initially designed by (at least in part) another team? [Ryan S / Peter]Edit
How complex all the rules were to get right. Peter used to look up every YouTube video saying "LOOK AT THIS CRAZY TESL PLAY" he could find, and then set it up in our engine to make sure the outcome was the same.
We also had some challenges that were caused by the expectations of the existing sets. For example, Triads were creating community controversy in various ways, but also created a clear expectation of finishing the other 5 Triads that we couldn't ignore. Meeting those expectations in fun ways was a nice problem to have, though, in certain ways, because it gave us some clear goals.
What is something unique or defining about the overall set design philosophy? [Ryan S / Peter]Edit
We got to work with amazing lore folks at Bethesda and Zenimax and had just a fantastic lore base to work from. We had plans to cover basically everything that existed in Elder Scrolls lore, both because it was definitely expected by the community and easier to do as a team. So we were working top-down most of the time, coming up with sets whose design did justice to the original.
That said, one of the biggest regrets of things ending when they did was that we were starting to look at really cool opportunities to branch out past the existing lore, which leads into the next question…
Were there any major ideas you (or the team) wanted to do from a card or set design perspective that you never got to or couldn't make work? [Ryan S / Peter]Edit
Our plans were for Oblivion to be a two part set - what we put out is (most of) the first set that we had planned, and then we were planning on the second set to be based around the Daedric Princes. We had some exciting conversations about expanding the Elder Scrolls lore, fleshing out the realms of the Daedric Princes in ways that mainline Elder Scrolls games hadn't yet done. We also had some mechanical ideas we were starting work on about becoming an avatar of a Daedric Prince via a new card type (resulting in your portrait being replaced!) and huge Daedra creatures that would take up space in both lanes. That second set was something that we felt pretty sad not getting to do. It also resulted in Invade being kind of a half-baked mechanic, because we were trying to wrap everything up on an accelerated timeline. We had plans for it to get more appropriate answers and checks, especially in that second set, and that didn't really happen.
We also were planning to continue to tie into ESO. For Elsweyr, we had gotten some advanced sneak-peeks into the lore and characters, which was super exciting both as designers and Elder Scrolls fans. And it resulted in one of the best-received sets for TESL! So we were looking forward to continuing to use ESO as a touchstone moving forward, even though that didn't materialize.
We also were in discussions about new game modes, more multiplayer Arena-like experiences. That would have been cool to do as well.
That said, the Tamriel Collection we released at the end of the game's life (and several of the subsequent monthly cards, which we designed in advance) was where we put most of the individual card ideas we still had and wanted to do. We really enjoyed the community and working on the project and wanted to do right by them by putting everything we had out there to play with, and we hope that it softened the blow at least a little bit.